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by
Michio Kaku
Read between
March 24 - April 16, 2018
comedian Mort Sahl would summarize his career with the quip, “I reach for the stars, but sometimes I hit London.”
To initiate the process of terraforming, we might inject methane and water vapor into the atmosphere to induce an artificial greenhouse effect. These greenhouse gases would capture sunlight and steadily raise the temperature of the ice caps. As the ice caps melt, they would release trapped water vapor and carbon dioxide.
Just a minute! Global warming deniers say man-made climate change is a hoax!
Left unchecked over the course of months or years, the number of bacteria in a colony can reach truly staggering quantities, rivaling the size of the planet Earth.
Lets not forget two things:
1) conservation of matter...it can’t outgrow its food supply
2) in the cycle before it becomes the size of the earth, it would be half the size of the earth
At what point will robots make this transition and become dangerous? I personally think the key turning point is precisely when robots become self-aware.
Not sufficient. They would also have to be more inteligent than humans.
Hollywood has countered Kurzweil’s utopia with a worst-case scenario for what it might mean to create our own evolutionary successors, who might push us aside and make us go the way of the dodo bird.
We'll know when this is about to happen because machines will stop making computers with human interfaces.
You wouldn’t suffer the crushing g-forces experienced when a booster rocket blasts off its launchpad.
Yes you would. Ever heard of Coreolis force? As you rise in the shaft your tangential velocity has to change from 1000 mph to 18000 mph to get into low earth orbit. A space elevator would only work for geosynchronous orbits, (which are 40000 km up) which is suitable for communications satellites. The tangential velocity at 100 miles up is not high enough to sustain orbit.
Today, the quest for the fountain of youth, a field once populated by mystics, charlatans, and quacks, is now being tackled by the world’s leading scientists. Although a cure for aging does not yet exist, scientists are pursuing many promising avenues of research. Already, they can extend the life span of certain animals, but it remains to be seen if this can be transferred to humans.
What aboutthe ethics if immorality? Overcrowding, the increasing wealth gap. Society would become even more narcissistic. Would longer lives mean more children? What opportunities would they face. Evolution itself would be short-circuited.
What happens if we solve the problem of aging?
You'd then have to solve the problem of immortality!
When and if this happens, then the vast distance to the stars may not seem so daunting.
Youre forgetting that for near light speed travellers the journey is very brief. It only takes a long time for those that are at the point of departure, or at the distination.
All this, in turn, may help to accelerate the mass exodus from the Earth, providing a safe haven for pioneers who are tired of an overpopulated and polluted planet.
The number of people that Mars could support is very small!
And at the speed of light, you have taken the fastest possible journey to the stars. From your point of view, the trip is instantaneous.
No, its not. You are in a fixed reference frame lab at home base. You have to wait for the round trip travel time to get information. It’s instantaneous only for a physical traveller at light speed.
it gets colder and colder, intelligent beings will adjust and think slower and slower, according to physicist Freeman Dyson. Eventually, a simple thought may take millions of years, but these beings will never notice because all other beings will think slower as well.
Hey, thats happening in Washington right now!
